This Assignee's Harriett U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,656,062; 4,810,573; 4,733,989; 4,787,780; 4,668,724; and 4,534,926; all hereby incorporated by reference, disclose the preferred composition core material of the coated articles manufactured in accordance with the present invention. In accordance with the Harriett patents, a sheet of release paper is applied over the bentonite clay/elastomer or polypropene or polybutene compositions described in this Assignee's aforementioned patents to prevent the waterproofing materials from adhering to themselves during manufacture, handling and installation, or when the materials are manufactured in roll form. The release paper, however, does not protect the water-swellable composition from premature hydration, e.g., by rainwater, prior to installing the composition in an area of potential water flow.
The rod-, or rope-shaped water-swellable clay compositions described herein generally are manually placed between two separately poured concrete sections, during construction. The clay composition is disposed in contact with a cured concrete section prior to pouring an adjacent concrete section such that the composition is disposed between and in contact with the two concrete sections. By this placement, the rod- or rope-shaped clay composition, when swelled by water, expands to profile the adjacent concrete section surfaces to fill any concrete voids and unfilled areas to prevent water penetration between the adjacent concrete sections. Concrete construction projects are not normally perfectly timed such that immediately after one concrete section is poured and cured, e.g., a concrete footing, there is just enough time to position the subject rod- or rope-shaped clay composition prior to pouring an adjacent concrete section in contact with the intermediate clay composition. Instead, normally there are days or weeks between concrete pours leaving time for rainwater to contact the clay composition disposed in contact with the cured concrete section prior to pouring the adjacent concrete section.
The co-extruded covering materials, described herein, are disposed to encase the water-swellable clay composition in order to prevent the clay composition from swelling prior to pouring an adjacent concrete section over the cured concrete section on which the rod- or rope-shaped clay composition is disposed. The co-extruded covering material prevents the clay composition from premature swelling to an extent that the clay composition expands and becomes misaligned, or would be squeezed out from between the adjacent concrete section due to its premature expansion.
In accordance with this Assignee's Byrd U.S. Pat. No. 5,580,630, a coating of a water-soluble polymer, preferably polyvinyl alcohol, having immediate water-solubility, is applied onto an adhesive side of sheet-form waterproofing articles to allow the sticky material to be rolled upon itself for storage and transportation. The water-soluble polymer quickly dissolves upon contact with water so that the adhesive composition can be bonded to a substrate surface.
While water-soluble polymers have been used over water-swellable clay compositions in sheet form (Byrd '630), and over water-permeable facing sheet materials, having apertures therein, for preventing premature hydration of a water-swellable clay layer thereunder, as disclosed in this Assignee's Alexander U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,053,265; 5,063,100 and 5,180,255, hereby incorporated by reference, the water-penetrable or water-soluble polymer coating layers have not been co-extruded over or otherwise applied over rod-shaped or rope-shaped water-swellable clay-containing materials.